350 Comments

Like I said, I agree that from a PR standpoint, this was badly done. However, now that it IS done, if you have important systems to protect, you need to get on with it.

BTW: you can get your "old" start menu back if you installing something like this: http://www.classicshell.net/

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Just wait til the hackers go after your pacemaker!

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A spy person pointed out recently that all the horrid things we were told to be afraid that the NSA was doing to us ARE being done to us, by other nations.

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This dude thinks Shadow Brokers is just the latest mask for the Russians. https://www.byline.com/colu...

Since the Brokers literally sell their shit the Wannacry hackers could be North Koreans who bought it. Although IT people at the time said whoever was running the ransomware didn't understand it fully, so possibly not exactly the same group who pulled off the Sony hack. One backhanded compliment was that the NSA tools were so superbly designed, an idiot could point and shoot them.. :/

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Yeah. Having watched her work, I think she's a genius, but will cycle through things so fast she doesn't check her work enough. Garbage in, garbage out.

She's said she gets thousands of pieces of info a day, but inevitably, some of those are nuts, attention whores, and the very disinformation assholes who got us here. Professional disinformation people will provide good intelligence long enough to make you trust them, then start sabotaging you.

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Chaffetz DID get a $10 million donation from Trump.

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The anti-Trump twitter brigade is an unholy alliance between NeverTrumpers and liberals! Its common for Trumpies to insist that all NeverTrumpers and their fans are therefore liberals.

That said, its fair to criticize Mensch's writing ability and facts, but too often people act as if criticizing her politics or personality discredits her investigations.

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The FBI said somewhere they're making progress with the tech companies toward some kind of fix with future iterations where they could get them to unlock the phones if they have physical access and a court order.

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Good sentiment, but MS patched the vulnerabilities that enabled WannaCrypt so disabling WU means you're wide open.

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I mostly like Win10, but don't forget a good anti-virus and make sure it updates itself properly.

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You can turn the tables and scam/troll them right back!

https://arstechnica.com/inf...

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It's not just her dodgy political connections that make me wary of her. Rick Wilson will never not be disgraced by what he did to Max Cleland, and Evan McMullin generally saves all this fervor for a fairly nasty agenda (note that he didn't report the Russians pay Trump conversation before his team held the House on a platform of checking Hillary).

What bothers me most about her is that she hypes a lot of bombshells which aren't bombshells, and she has a backbencher's tendency to throw shitbombs at her opponents in hopes that something will stick, and she's not careful. tbh, I assume any story she doesn't provide open sourcing on is at best hype, and at worst planted disinformation.

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so you are to dumb to have an answer. got ya

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As a rule of thumb, remember that the older the software, the more time hackers and malware guys have had to mess around with it and find holes, and the less likely users are to have kept their software properly patched and updated.

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That's something that drives me absolutely bats... the number of people who think that because they installed Norton or some other paid anti-virus application 3 years ago, they're covered even though they let the subscription lapse.

Viruses can be developed fast, but they generally share some known characteristics. Anti-malware software makers (even the free products) typically release new virus signature files - files that teach the software what the latest viruses look like to help catch them - at least every 8-12 hours. Paid companies release these signature files only to subscribers.

If you're not getting signature files, your computer can't recognize new viruses. Period.

Install a decent product (even a free one), ensure that it updates regularly and frequently, run a full scan every day, and ensure that heuristic scanning is enabled.

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I get those calls from time to time, and I put on my momliest voice and tell them they should be shamed before their mothers for making a living by cheating people.

They get a little upset at that.

My favorite ones are the guys with heavy accents who call to tell me that they're from the "Internal Revenue Services" and they're sending law enforcement to my door. I've had about 4 or 5 of those.

I listen and string them along and act horrified... and then say "okey-dokey... a few things, cupcake. Having worked for the IRS myself, I know that's not how they collect money...and the name of the agency is not Internal Revenue Services, you twit." Sometimes, they stay on the line long enough to curse me before hanging up. Only one tried to convince me that he was telling the truth... it must have been his first day.

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